Human Needs as Major Factor of Understanding the Law

The article characterizes the author’s concept of needs-oriented approach to law based on historical materialist social philosophy. This approach is applied on the fundamental level of the research. According to this view law is a possibility of person’s (or groups’) ability – determined by the level of development of society – to receive and use the means necessary to meet his biological and social – in the specifi c historical conditions – needs of existence and development and ensure the social responsibilities of other actors. For the justifi cation of this vies Case law of the European Court of Human Rights is involved. Also the author discloses informative and explanatory power his needs-oriented approach in the justifi cation of fundamentally unavoidable meaningful pluralism understanding of law and a certain dynamism inherent to each of them, as well as in the detection of the social essence of the various phenomena which in jurisprudence, and in state-legal regulatory practices are designated by term «law» and «right». In a class society (and the other is now nowhere to be found in the future is unlikely to occur) next to the general social needs are inevitably existing also needs (interests) of group and individual. Their variety is determined with natural division into different parts: the nation’s socioeconomic classes, professional classes, ideological, particularly religious groups, and others. Of course, biological separation of people (age, sex) also matters in this regard. And so it seems natural that each of these parts of society (represented by its individual or collective representatives) prefer to consider as «law» (ie, the phenomenon of right, fair, just, reasonable, lawful) primarily those phenomena that facilitate and do not complicate individual’s life, livelihoods, development, that promote rather than hinder the satisfaction of his needs (interests). And such – in fact «needs-oriented» – reasons are often, the author concludes, more powerful, more effective than any other factors (in particular, epistemological). They also cause deep infl uence on the choice of the phenomenon that the a person considers as «law» and «right». Therefore, there is a reason to conclude that differences in human needs, in the means of
their satisfaction constitute the fundamental, defi ning cause of pluralism of the concept of law